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the chinese life and economy in indonesia 1920-1980 TOWKAYS AND TYCOONS: THE CHINESE IN INDONESIAN ECONOMIC LIFE IN THE 1920s AND 1980s Jamie Mackie Since the nationalization in 1957-1958 of the Dutch business enterprises that had domi- nated the colonial economy, including most of the country's largest pla...

the chinese life and economy in indonesia 1920-1980
TOWKAYS AND TYCOONS: THE CHINESE IN INDONESIAN ECONOMIC LIFE IN THE 1920s AND 1980s Jamie Mackie Since the nationalization in 1957-1958 of the Dutch business enterprises that had domi- nated the colonial economy, including most of the country's largest plantations, mines, banks, and business houses, many Chinese firms previously confined to an intermediate position in the "colonial caste structure/' as Wertheim has called it,1 have been able to ad- vance to the topmost ranks in the present economic structure of Indonesia. Collectively, they now overshadow the previously dominant state sector made up largely of those national- ized enterprises. The two largest Chinese firms, Liem Sioe Liong's vast conglomerate and William Soeryadjaya's Astra Corporation, hold assets that were estimated to be worth Rp. 6.4 trillion and Rp. 2 trillion respectively (US$3.5 billion and $1.2 billion) in 1988, whereas ten others are in the $40G-$700 million range and another one hundred or so exceed the $100 million mark.2 By any measure, international as well as local, the foremost of these men can aptly be called tycoons, "businessmen of extraordinary wealth and power," in the dictionary definition, whose wealth far exceeds that of their predecessors earlier in the century, Dutch as well as Chinese. In contrast, none of the wealthiest Chinese towkay of the 1920s (a word that refers rather indeterminately to "a Chinese big businessman," although not always an especially rich one) could have been compared with the big Dutch capitalists of the colonial era, apart from the almost legendary Oei Tiong Ham, to whom I will return shortly.3 Most explanations of how and why this transformation has occurred tend to fall some- where between two rival camps. On one side are the structural and class interpretations, *W. F. Wertheim, Indonesian Society in Transition (The Hague: Van Hoeve, 1956), chap. 6. 2Figures based on Warta Ekonomi, 5 (5), (July 1989): 72, and Conglomeration Indonesia. A Profile of Indonesia's Largest Business Groupings, ed. Christianto Wibisono (Jakarta: Pusat Dokumentasi Business Indonesia, 1990). Although all such estimates of company assets must be treated with reserve, these are probably adequate to indicate approximate orders of magnitude. ^Definitions of towkay and tycoon are taken from Mary Somers-Heidhues, Southeast Asia's Chinese Minorities (Hawthorn, Vic.: Longman Studies in Contemporary Southeast Asia, 1976), p. 114, and Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, respectively. 84 Jamie Mackie which weight the close relationships the new tycoons have developed with the New Order political and military authorities. At the other extreme are those explanations that stress ethnic and cultural factors or simply take for granted that the commercial successes of the Southeast Asian Chinese more generally are owing to their seemingly ingrained advantages over their indigenous rivals in business skills and motivations. Both approaches have much to be said for them, and both have their weaknesses; neither is entirely adequate in itself. A complex interplay of ethnic and class factors has shaped the development of Chinese busi- ness enterprises in Southeast Asia over the last century or more, which is not easily reduced to one-dimensional generalizations at any stage. To understand the processes involved one needs ideally to be able to trace the evolution of the economic roles of particular Chinese businessmen, or broad groups of them, in the particular historical and sociopolitical contexts of their times. That is not easy, however, for it is difficult to get adequate biographical or historical information about even the better-known of them, let alone the more obscure and poor Chinese who remain in the shadows. All one can do is draw inferences from the lives of the few wealthy figures, both past and present, whose stories have been recorded. In an attempt to sketch changes in the economic situation and roles of the Sino-Indone- sian minority as a whole during this century, I will focus here on the two men about whose careers information is most fully available, Oei Tiong Ham and Liem Sioe Liong.4 Because both were outstandingly successful and wealthy, they cannot be regarded as representative of Chinese businessmen in general, let alone of the entire Chinese minority. But if one can identify the factors that made these men so successful, one may find clues to the successes or failures of others. One must be wary of the stereotypical notion that the Southeast Asian Chinese have long been predominantly traders because some superior aptitude for commerce and small- scale industry was lacking among the indigenous peoples. It was really only from about the 1920s onward that large numbers of Chinese in Indonesia began to move away from other occupations, mostly less desirable ones, as in the case of thousands of plantation and mining coolies, into what today are commonly regarded as their characteristic roles as small-scale traders, warung operators, commodity dealers, and money lenders. There had, of course, been significant numbers of Chinese in those roles in various parts of the colony long before the 1920s, but they were then far less widely or thickly spread geographically, and fewer engaged in petty trade than those in later periods. Since the 1920s, however, they have be- come almost ubiquitous in those roles. The changes in occupations and economic roles that unfolded between 1900 and 1930 (arrested by the onset of the Great Depression, which caused the cessation of large-scale Chinese immigration) must be seen as the beginning of a long process of adjustment and adaptation to constantly evolving economic and political conditions that can be traced to the present day. The splendid picture James Rush has given in this volume of the extensive networks or pyramids of Chinese patrons and clients that were established around the great opium con- cessions (farms) held by the opium "kings" in central and eastern Java in the latter half of the nineteenth century provides us with a good starting point for this story slightly farther back in time. Many of the lower-level participants in that business must have been petty traders in small towns who dealt in opium inter alia through those networks. But because of ^he term "Sino-Indonesian," rather than "Indonesian Chinese," is used here in the contemporary context by analogy with the generally accepted term "Sino-Thai" to stress nationality not ethnicity. For the years before the 1960s, when the dual nationality issue was still unresolved, the indefinite term "Chinese" is appropriate and more convenient. Towkays and Tycoons 85 their involvement in the networks (frequently illegal and semicriminal in character, Rush observes) they were probably traders of a rather different type from the more modern shop- house owners who operate independently—and in most cases honestly—and who fanned out across entirely new areas of Java and the Outer Islands in the early decades of this cen- tury. Rush notes that in addition to the kings who controlled the opium farms, and their numerous retainers in the late nineteenth century, there were also many penniless newcom- ers and small-scale vendors and tradespeople among the Chinese, who never earned more than modest incomes or rose above menial occupations. But they were nowhere near as numerous or widespread at that time as they became by the 1920s. The big money was in opium until the economic crisis of the 1880s, the product that seems to have attracted the most enterprising or acquisitive of the Chinese with substantial capital. Others, although not many, were engaged in commodity trading and in cultivation, particularly of sugar and tobacco, from much earlier in the century. Most were not yet large-scale operators, however, and if big fortunes were made in these sectors, they did not lead to the emergence of fami- lies as wealthy as those produced by the opium trade. What Rush calls the "dance of collaboration" between the Chinese opium kings and the local Dutch and Javanese officials, especially his observation that the former were located physically close to the powerholders and "nested within the power structure," has much in common with the kinds of relationships that prevail today between leading Chinese capital- ists and Indonesian powerholders, both in Jakarta and in the provincial capitals and smaller towns throughout the country. But this system disintegrated in the 1890s, he tells us, as the opium farms collapsed financially, and the authority of the peranakan (locally born) elite families waned under the impact of a new wave of totok (China-born) immigrants. The eco- nomic roles of the Chinese and the character of the various Chinese communities changed significantly over the next forty years as did the entire colonial economy, owing to the vig- orous expansion of the Dutch plantation system and the much higher investment levels in all fields between the 1890s and 1929. Chinese Business in Indonesia in the 1920s Patterns of Chinese business activity in many parts of the colony were transformed in the years between the collapse of the opium farms in the 1880s and the 1920s, the last pros- perous decade before the Great Depression, which brought a radically new set of changes. This was a time of rapid increase in the Chinese population, owing to a high rate of immi- gration, primarily of indentured laborers for the Sumatran plantation industries.5 One result was a widening rift within Chinese society between the peranakan and totok communities, both political and economic. At the same time, the dramatic expansion of the Dutch-domi- nated plantation economy severely constrained the scope of operation for the existing Chi- nese planters in the sugar and tobacco industries, although it opened up other trading opportunities for them as the plantation frontier expanded into new areas of Java and Sumatra. It was directly associated with an increase in the number of small Chinese waning owners scattered throughout the archipelago. A detailed diachronic account of the economic processes and sociocultural dynamics underlying the changes then taking place would be an illuminating supplement to the several rather static accounts available of Chinese business activities in the last years before World War II. A few of the more prominent individuals who emerged as business leaders are identifiable, but, with the exception of the SThe Chinese population of the colony rose from 344,000 to 800,000 between 1880 and 1920, then to 1,233,000 in 1930. For fuller details, see J. A. C. Mackie, 'The Geographical Dispersal and Occupations of the Indonesian Chi- nese, 1900-1930," Asian Culture (Singapore), 14 (April 1990): 5-22. 86 Jamie Mackie biggest towkays like Oei Tiong Ham, Tjong A Fie, and a handful of others, little is known of their business careers. The disintegration at this time of the symbiotic relationship between wealthy Chinese businessmen and colonial officials noted by Rush was attributable not just to the collapse of the opium kings but also to the fact that the Chinese now found themselves more generally under pressure, even under attack, by the Dutch authorities as exploiters of the native peo- ple, a popular theme of Ethical Policy reformers. The point can be carried even farther into the present century. The Chinese minority was regarded with hostility, or at least suspicion, by the various state authorities in Indonesia not only through the last half-century of colo- nial rule but also throughout the next thirty years of Japanese occupation, the revolution, and the early years of independence. Only since the 1970s has something like that earlier symbiotic relationship with the ruling elite been reestablished. The general thrust of gov- ernment policy during the period of rapid expansion of the Dutch plantation economy be- tween 1900 and 1930 was to exclude Chinese and indigenous producers from participation in that sector lest they disturb the Dutch planters7 access to land, labor, and markets at minimum costs. Only one Chinese firm succeeded in competing with the Dutch on their own ground at this time, the Oei Tiong Ham Concern. Its story throws light on the scope of and limits upon Chinese big business during that late colonial period of rapid economic expansion, although Oei was quite unlike other Chinese businesssmen of that time in many respects. In his early years he was one of the last of the old-style opium kings, yet he soon transformed himself into a new-style modern capitalist using business techniques similar to those of the Dutch. Oei thus became one of the few Chinese who survived in the fiercely competitive business of sugar cultivation; he also succeeded in establishing a set of mills that were among the most modern and efficient in the colony, which at the time was the most technically ad- vanced sugar producer in the world. He was a remarkably innovative and forward-looking businessman by any standard. Born in Semarang in 1866, Oei Tiong Ham was the son of a moderately well-to-do, edu- cated Chinese who had fled to Java not long before, after the collapse of the Taiping rebel- lion in which he had participated. Oei's father, although penniless on his arrival in Sema- rang, was soon able to build his sugar trading company, Kian Guan. This firm persisted as the core component of the family business until the 1950s, a record in longevity for a major Indonesian Chinese firm. His son, Oei Tiong Ham, was brought into the firm after a period of Chinese-language schooling. By the age of twenty-four, after being appointed lieutenant of the Chinese in Semarang, he was not only managing the firm but was also involved in the opium farm business, presumably by virtue of the standing of his family at that time.6 The early stages of Oei Tiong Ham's career and the reasons for his initial success are still obscure. There are several legendary stories about him during this period: that he was a heavy gambler who nearly lost a large sum of his father's money at one point but was saved by the generosity of an old Chinese lady who had confidence in him; and that he was bequeathed a substantial legacy by an old German living in one of his father's houses in Semarang who had taken a liking to him, which enabled him to purchase his first sugar plantation. Regardless of the truth or fantasy behind these anecdotes, it is clear that the most important of these early steps in career advancement must have been his decision to buy several sugar plantations in the early 1890s at a time when the industry was just beginning 6A useful set of biographical studies on which I have drawn here is compiled in Yoshihara Kunio, ed., Oei Tiong Ham Concern: the First Business Empire of Southeast Asia (Kyoto: Centre for Southeast Asian Studies, 1989). Tσwkays and Tycoons 87 to emerge from its severe 1880s slump, while values were still depressed. In the following years, sugar prices, demand, and production rose steadily so that the five plantations he acquired soon became the basis of a strong, well-integrated group of companies extending from sugar production and trading to a shipping company, warehouses, a bank, and over- seas trading offices. It seems unlikely that the opium farm was an especially critical element in his growing fortune because the opium trade was declining by the 1890s. In any case, his family was already quite well off, so the capital needed to build up his business enterprise was not difficult to acquire. But what made him such an outstanding businessman for his time was the way he ran his business once he got started, for in this he was quite untypical of other Chinese businessmen of the late colonial era. The key factor in his commercial success seems to have been an awareness of the need to adopt Dutch business methods and technical skills combined with a shrewd sense of timing in his purchases and sales. In the latter respect he was perhaps not very different from other Chinese traders of his time, but he was far ahead of them in the former (although it is puz- zling that no others followed him on that score). One of his mills was the first in Java to be electrified. He employed Dutch mill technicians, accountants, and lawyers extensively, and also used Dutch-trained Chinese with similar qualifications in due course. He avoided ex- cessive diversification into activities unrelated to his sugar-based enterprise, although Kian Guan's overseas trading interests expanded and diversified considerably after World War I. Oei Tiong Ham's relations with the Dutch authorities appear to have been reasonably cordial but never particularly close, not at all comparable with the symbiotic relationships with national political leaders that later developed in the 1970s and 1980s. He did not speak Dutch and appears not to have associated socially with Dutch officials in Semarang, although he entertained lavishly, including visiting state guests such as King Chula- longkorn. Yet he received little help from the government and was sufficiently outraged by its imposition of a stiff excess profits tax on him after he had made a killing from the steep increase in sugar prices during World War I that he moved permanently to Singapore in protest. He died there, still in his fifties, in 1924. Although the Oei Tiong Ham Concern survived his death and continued to operate into the 1950s under the leadership of the two most competent of his many sons (he had twenty- five children in all), it gradually became a less successful business enterprise and was finally nationalized in 1961 after running into political problems with the Sukarno government. It survived the difficult years of depression, World War II, and the struggle for independence that followed with only moderate setbacks but faced increasing problems in adapting to the radically different conditions that emerged after independence. Above all, it was weakened at that critical juncture by the universal problem of generational change within a Chinese family firm, which gave rise to debilitating intrafamily disputes in the 1950s over matters of control and business strategy. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that leadership and per- sonality factors were crucially important in both the rise and decline of this first great Indo- nesian Chinese corporate enterprise. None of the other leading Chinese merchant families of the early twentieth century achieved anything like the eminence of Oei Tiong Ham. His nearest rival was Kwik Hoo Tong, a very successful trader in sugar and other agricultural commodities during the boom years of the 1920s (until he went bankrupt) also based in Semarang. (The prominence of Semarang Chinese at that time is interesting, for the only Chinese firms that actually culti- vated plantation crops in East Java, where the biggest Dutch agricultural enterprises were concentrated, seem to have been much smaller than those in Central Java.) Kwik's company did not compete directly with modern Dutch enterprises in plantation agriculture, however. 88 Jamie Mackίe He was more an old-style towkay than a modern tycoon. Much the same could be said of the famous Tjong A Fie, an influential Kapίtien der Chίneezen in Medan, who had diverse business interests and close relations with the Dutch local authorities but no particular and enduring base to his enterprise comparable to that of Oei.7 A few Chinese planters cultivated sugar and other plantation crops in Java on a small scale until the 1920s, but none approached the stature of the Oei Tiong Ham Concern. The expansion of large Dutch corporate plantations from the 1880s on crippled the embryonic class of Chinese sugar and tobacco planters who had previously been able to compete against Dutch planters in significant numbers at a time when most of those enterprises were quite small and rudimentary, generally between 17
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